Adam Lyth and the rest of this Yorkshire team have earned a prominent place in the long history of Roses cricket, and by the close of play on Wednesday they could also be champions elect.

They came into this game with a six-point lead over Nottinghamshire and victories for Yorkshire and Durham would extend that gap to a commanding 26 points before the title rivals meet at Trent Bridge next week, the penultimate fixture for each of them.

“Obviously we’re in a great position here, and fingers crossed Durham do us a favour as well,” said Lyth, whose monumental 251 broke a record held by Leonard Hutton but fell a single short of the all-time Roses best set by Darren Lehmann at Headingley in 2001 – Yorkshire’s last title-winning campaign. “I had a fair bit to do with Boof, and obviously he was a super player, so I’ll let him have that record,” added the 26-year-old of Lehmann. “I’m very pleased with what I’ve done.”

Lyth, resuming on 182, moved smoothly to the fourth double-century for a Yorkshire batsman against Lancashire and passed the 201 made by Hutton in 1949 which was a White Rose record on enemy soil. Shortly after lunch he and Adil Rashid set a sixth-wicket record for Yorkshire, beating the 276 put on by Maurice Leyland and Emmott Robinson against Glamorgan in Swansea in 1926, and the stage was set for Lyth to usurp Lehmann.

But then, in the 154th over, with the partnership worth 296, he was caught in two minds advancing down the pitch to Stephen Parry’s left-arm spin.“I should have belted it over the top but I’d been told by our analyst at lunch about the record so I tried to play it along the floor for a single,” he said. “One short, eh? Shit happens.”

An England call-up may well happen this winter, too, although given the seven-month gap before the next Test series in the West Indies, Lyth’s first appointment seems likely to be with the Lions in South Africa in January. “The way I’ve played this season, if I got a call now I think I’m ready to step up,” he said.

But for the moment his priority is winning a championship with Yorkshire, and first ending Lancashire’s unbeaten run of 15 Roses matches stretching back to 2002. The same goes for Rashid, who ended unbeaten on 159 from 238 balls having played delightfully for his second century of a mixed season, in which he has become a father at the age of 26.

Like Lyth, he feels he is a much better player – in his case with ball as well as bat –than when he received early international recognition, with 10 limited-overs appearances for England in 2009-10. After Ryan Sidebottom had made the first breakthrough following Andrew Gale’s declaration – on a record Roses total, beating Yorkshire’s 590 in Bradford in 1887 – Rashid found Paul Horton’s leading edge and took an acrobatic return catch.

The left-handed imports Ashwell Prince and Usman Khawaja resisted for the remainder of the day, with Jonny Bairstow spilling a sharp chance off Lyth’s occasional off-spin, and Gale was sufficiently frustrated to exchange angry words and gesticulations with Prince as the players left the field, having been spoken to by the umpires moments earlier. “It was getting a bit tasty towards the end,” Lyth confirmed. But eight more wickets and Yorkshire will be smiling widely come Wednesday night.